Design and Development: Fostering Graduate Student Professional Development Through an Instructional Incubator and Teaching Apprenticeship Model

Biomedical research in the United States is highly dependent on academic research primarily performed by graduate students. Throughout their graduate studies, biomedical students immerse themselves in research, with little or no training in best teaching practices or knowledge of alternative, non-academic career opportunities, such as industry or government agencies.

As a result, graduates who do not continue with traditional academic careers struggle with the transition to non-academic careers because they know very little about alternatives; also, those who remain in academics and research struggle with the increasing teaching demands they face as faculty. While graduate school used to be considered a rite of passage to a career in academic research, a job in academics is no longer a guarantee.

Thus, biomedical graduate programs have a responsibility to reconsider how they are training their students for their careers after graduation. The goal of this project is to develop a course sequence for graduate students to learn more about alternative careers and best teaching practices. The graduate students will not only learn about careers and teaching practices, but they also will work with postdoctoral fellows and faculty to translate what they learn into an undergraduate classroom.

This will give them a chance to have a first-hand teaching experience and consider how to develop the critical skills needed by today's biomedical workforce.

The purpose of this Design and Development project is to develop a transferrable model for graduate student professional development as both educators and non-academics. Graduate education is faced with two fundamental problems: 1) students who choose to pursue academics are not trained how to teach; and, 2) graduates who choose to leave academics have little exposure to alternative postgraduate opportunities.

This project focuses on developing an Incubator/Apprenticeship Model that exposes graduate students to the rapidly changing world of science and technology innovations and workforce trends, while being immersed in the exploration of learning theories and research-based teaching approaches for curriculum design (e.g. problem-based learning, active learning). As a result, graduate students will participate in an immersive curriculum development experience informed by evidence-based practices and be exposed to non-academic postgraduate opportunities commonly not addressed directly in higher education.

The development of this innovation leverages the instructional design process, social constructivist theory, situated learning theory, and instructor beliefs. While this proof of concept is grounded in the context of biomedical engineering, the proposed theory of action is broadly applicable. The impact of the proposed sequence will be studied qualitatively and quantitatively.

Students will be surveyed pre- and post-instruction. A subset of students will also be interviewed. This proposed instructional design sequence is a proof of concept for a novel, transferrable model for programs to foster graduate student professional development that is responsive to the rapidly changing world of science and technology innovations and workforce trends.

Results will be disseminated on the University of Michigan Biomedical Enginering Transforming Engineering Education website and through educational conferences and journal articles. Other institutions interested in implementing this sequence are invited to attend any of the classes and reach out for consultation.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.